WATTEAU’S FOLLOWERS
Although Watteau indicated the direction that French art was to follow in a century when it had to cater no longer for the stateapartment but for the boudoir, he left no follower worthy to carry on his tradition. Nicolas Lancret (1690–1743), who had studied under Dulin and Gillot, based his style upon Watteau, whom he almost rivalled as a draughtsman. But he was an inferior colourist, and wholly lacking in poetic inspiration. One has only to compare his Actors of the Italian Comedy (No. 470) with Watteau’s Gilles (No. 983), or his Music Lesson (No. 468) and Innocence (No. 469) with their prototypes created by that master, to realise the inferiority of these thin, vulgarised versions of Watteau subjects.
Jean Baptiste Pater (1695–1736), who, like Watteau, was born at Valenciennes, became a pupil of his fellow-townsman in Paris, and benefited considerably by his guidance. Although inferior as a draughtsman to Lancret, whom he did not rival either in originality, he far surpassed him as a colourist. With Lancret, colour was generally an afterthought; with Pater, it entered into the primary conception of the picture. His Academy diploma piece, the Fête Champêtre (No. 689), is painted in the Watteau manner with true pictorial feeling, even if it lacks the master’s precious, jewel-like quality of pigment. The Fête Champêtre (No. 203), by Bonaventure Debar (1700–1729), holds promise of a considerable talent in a similar direction, cut short by a premature death.